Prelude
First, I want to thank Poody and the rest of the hosting team for a really fantastic season of Stranded. This has been my favorite season I’ve played, because there was a certain maturity and empathy in how everyone involved handled the game. I feel like this is what Survivor should be and I’m proud to be a part of it.
Steph, it’s been very cool to finally play a full game with you after all these years. Even if our allegiance has been partially due to strategy, I really appreciate how clear-cut and respectful our communication has been throughout this process.
Yve, it’s been a pleasure to get to know you this season. I think you’re strategically savvy, empathetic, and the ideal ride-or-die to have in a game. From the wild Cochran boot to the Final 3, it’s been a great ride.
Jury, as obvi as this sounds, my goal with my opening statement and jury answers is to earn your votes. I want to do that by proving to you that I worked hard, made the right decisions at the right times, have the self-awareness of a winner, and that I’m the kind of player that you want to represent an All-Winners version of Stranded. All I ask is that you keep an open mind.
My Personal Approach
So, I won Isolated 3. That game was a beast in itself and I had to fight a lot to secure that win. But, even as proud as I am of my performance there, it’s not actually Stranded. I’ve played Stranded four real times and I wouldn’t call any of those times satisfactory. I’ve never gotten my footing socially or strategically here, so I wanted to come into this game with a bit of a different mentality.
Whereas some of you came here because you wanted to defend your legacy, redeem yourself, or just revel into whatever an All-Winners game could mean: I came in with the desire to learn and adapt. I wanted every conversation to be a learning experience and my goal was to allow those lessons to shape my behavior.
The common thread I found with every person I met- each of you- was that it isn’t about minimizing the aspects of yourself that are less desirable, it’s about embracing the duality. For example I get a rush, in conversation, by being blunt and saying what I think without worrying about the nuances of how that could come across. This can make me seem too loose-lipped, but I can also help me connect with people who enjoy bluntness. It can make it seem like I’m trying to be manipulative with information sharing, but it can also help me build trust with those who are out of the loop. My personal goal became to adapt my playstyle, not to minimize my negative qualities entirely, but to lean into the good of them and do my best to get ahead of the negative consequences.
All of this is separate from the more strategic elements of the game because I don’t think I’ve ever really been bad at strategy, and I think a lot of my strategic decisions are obvious. So, as I explain my game, I want to frame it with my personal approach to help you better understand what I did and why I did it.
My Strategic Gameof
Modern survivor has designed their FTCs based outwit, outplay, outlast. I do believe, more than any of the three here, I represent those tenets. I set myself up in the game to have a very likely shot to make it to the end, I won the most challenges, and I made the right strategic decisions at the right time that were essential for any of us sitting here to be here.
From he Cristina vote on, my goal in the game was to keep me and Yve. When neither of us were at risk, that didn’t mean trying to actively get whichever target out, it mean that I was doing the work to make sure that I minimized the chances of us being targeted in the next round. If she was at risk or I was at risk immediately, that means I was putting in the work to get the target onto someone else. The longer Yve and I stayed in, the easier it was for me to gain some momentum to make decisions, because this meant that there were a series of threat dominoes to fall before us around the Final 8.
While there were a few times where the “threats” tried to self-protect, the time that was most risky for my game was the Final 8 when Loveita and Catalie wanted to target Yve again. Both of them had final deals with Steph and, while Steph knew she had to vote out Cat at some point, at the time she was very set on going to the end with Loveita. With Steph’s rigidity and Kim’s budding reputation of being a sort-of-goat, I put in the work with this round to ensure that 1) the four of us would survive and 2) I would come out in the best position. I went to Catalie, Joaq, and Yve and asked them to vote for Loveita because she was so insanely wall connected at the time. Steph wanted to go to the end with her, Cat wanted her around for protection, and she had just gone with Cass & Kim on the Joaq vote. By severing a lot of these connections, I would be able to set myself up to have the most utility to survive for the rest of the game.
At the last minute, I went to Kim in order to get her/Cass to split their votes. I think this was successful because I’d made it abundantly clear to anyone in earshot that I had no intentions on going far with Joaq and Cat, despite being very close to them throughout the game. While Kim was a little spooked because Cat was impressively digging her claws into both of us, they did ultimately split. While Cat keeping Loveita was a wrench, ultimately setting up Loveita as a threat to go had already occurred and she went on the revote.
I think another very important moment was at the Final 6 with the Cassandra vote. Kim had been putting in a lot of work to get Cassandra out and, inversely, Cassandra’s target was on Stephenie because her and Cat were still trying to keep each other. This is another place where I put in the work to protect Stephenie despite her desire for it. Stephenie was close with Cat and wouldn’t vote for her at 6, so I made the call to throw two votes onto Cat because, I believed, with Steph out, my chances to winning were greatly reduced.
All around this time were my series of challenge wins. I didn’t want to leave myself vulnerable and I especially didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to pretend like they were dragging me or feeding me information. Individual Immunities in a game like this are CRUCIAL to get information fed to you. I could see why these wins could be dismissed with just experience or inherent skills, but these challenges were all hard-work related. For every single one, I practiced hard. For the two challenges that required game history, I made massive excel spreadsheets complete with this game’s history and a matrix of how we all interacted on our past games.
Conclusion
Long story short, I believe that I am the person who chose the right times to move my pieces in the right direction to set myself up for longevity, win as many challenges as possible, and sit next to the people I had the best shot at.
